Anthropic CEO Says AI Company 'Cannot In Good Conscience Accede' To Pentagon (apnews.com)
- Reference: 0180865608
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/02/26/2352217/anthropic-ceo-says-ai-company-cannot-in-good-conscience-accede-to-pentagon
- Source link: https://apnews.com/article/anthropic-ai-pentagon-hegseth-dario-amodei-9b28dda41bdb52b6a378fa9fc80b8fda
> Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Thursday the artificial intelligence company " [1]cannot in good conscience accede" to the Pentagon's demands to allow wider use of its technology. The maker of the AI chatbot Claude said in a statement that it's not walking away from negotiations, but that new contract language received from the Defense Department "made virtually no progress on preventing Claude's use for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons."
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> The Pentagon's top spokesman has reiterated that the military wants to use Anthropic's artificial intelligence technology in legal ways and will not let the company dictate any limits ahead of a [2]Friday deadline to agree to its demands. Sean Parnell said Thursday on social media that the Pentagon "has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement."
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> Anthropic's policies prevent its models, such as its chatbot Claude, from being used for those purposes. It's the last of its peers -- the Pentagon also has contracts with Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI -- to not supply its technology to a new U.S. military internal network. Parnell said the Pentagon wants to "use Anthropic's model for all lawful purposes" but didn't offer details on what that entailed. He said opening up use of the technology would prevent the company from "jeopardizing critical military operations." "We will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions," he said.
In [3]a post on X, Parnell said Anthropic will "have until 5:01 PM ET on Friday to decide. Otherwise, we will terminate our partnership with Anthropic and deem them a supply chain risk for DOW."
[1] https://apnews.com/article/anthropic-ai-pentagon-hegseth-dario-amodei-9b28dda41bdb52b6a378fa9fc80b8fda
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/02/24/1850232/hegseth-gives-anthropic-until-friday-to-back-down-on-ai-safeguards
[3] https://x.com/SeanParnellASW/status/2027072228777734474
Wow, scary (Score:2)
This is scary for two reasons. The government wants all guardrails off of unproven technology that can seriously screw things up and the government seriously thinks "AI" is that good. It's the dumb leading the blind.
doublespeak, we're not stupid sean (Score:3)
> Sean Parnell said Thursday on social media that the Pentagon "has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement."
if that was true your contract proposal would reflect it and this wouldn't be a story
Odd to root for one of these shops, but (Score:2)
I'm honestly surprised.
Either threat is pretty serious - nevermind that they're utterly contradictory.
Kegseth isn't going to invoke the DPA. They seem to get away with crazy shit that just hurts people, but they're trying not to spook the market, and going old-school socialist in peacetime is a bit much.
I can see this regime blacklisting them from DoD procurement, which would limit their "addressable market", as the tweedlers say. It would give them cred with certain segments, but that trade won't be r
Re: (Score:2)
They just need to hang in there.
And for all my AI skepticism, I'm growing to like Anthropic.
Hegseth is threatening to list them as a "procurement risk" which is a really dangerous thing for a country that puts them in the same category as companies like Huwei and could lose them billions in private sector contracts (Ie AWS couldnt hose Claude for clients etc). However I also suspect that the way the govt has been phrasing this as a "Comply or we do this horrible thing to you" would make any such designation
Re: (Score:2)
> Kegseth isn't going to invoke the DPA. They seem to get away with crazy shit that just hurts people, but they're trying not to spook the market, and going old-school socialist in peacetime is a bit much.
saw this too:
> It was not immediately clear how the Pentagon intends to label Anthropic a supply chain risk — which typically requires the government and its contractors to cut ties with that company — while simultaneously invoking the Defense Production Act to compel the company to cooperate with the Pentagon.
[1]https://www.politico.com/news/... [politico.com]
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/24/hegseth-sets-friday-deadline-for-anthropic-to-drop-its-ai-red-lines-00795641
Flip flop (Score:3)
As long as they stay in the news they're happy with whatever it seems. Although I back their latest decision for however long it lasts.
Like the DoD really cares about legality... (Score:3)
"...no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) "
Gee, it's so nice that the government is so law-abiding. I can't think of any past occurrences of the US government conducting illegal, non-consensual mass surveillance of American citizens. Nope, not a single occurrence.
In all seriousness, that's exactly what they'd do. It'd just be PRISM 2.0, but with significantly more misinformation, thanks to hallucinating clankers being at the forefront of Big Brother.